AirServer Brings Split-Screen Multiplayer iOS Gaming To Mac

The brand-new version of AirServer is being billed as “The Game Console For Mac.” Like previous versions of the software, AirServer runs on you Mac and turns it into an AirPlay receiver, allowing you to stream music, video, photos and even games to the Mac’s big screen, just as if it was an Apple TV. What’s new, though, is the ability to stream games from two players simultaneously for big-screen head-to-head action.

AirServer works just like it always has: you run it on the Mac (and now, if you”re in a beta kind of mood, the PC) and choose it as an AirPlay destination by double-tapping the home button, swiping to the right (one swipe on iPad, two on iPhone) and use the standard AirPlay picker. Then choose the mirroring option to see the game in a window on the Mac.

Mirroring works from any iPad, and from the iPhone 4S. I tried it with my iPod Touch (latest gen) and all I can do is send the sound.

Still, if you have the gear, this really does turn your iOS setup into a multiple-player games console. Albeit an expensive one. I can imagine a family using this to play Scrabble. Instead of a cheap boxed board game, you could use an iPad ($500) to mirror the Scrabble app to the 27-inch iMac ($1,700) in the living room, and then use the Scrabble Tiles app on the parents’ iPhones ($600 each, off contract) and the kids’ old gen-1 iPads ($500 each). That’s $4,400 for a game of scrabble, plus the $15 AirServer license.